Book Outtake: Always Something Weird in Amsterdam

In the comments following my last post, about how to enjoy the beaten path, Lee pointed out that we when we patronized Europe's myriad drinking establishments, we would typically make a point of sitting at the bar to chat up the bartenders and get a bit of local insider knowledge. That comment reminded me of a deleted scene from the book, so here's an outtake. Enjoy!

Everywhere we went in Amsterdam, we spotted these creepily dapper young men, in groups of five or ten. Probably in their early twenties. They wore dark sportcoats, black ties, carefully-groomed hair, vacant looks in their eyes, and unidentifiable but vaguely New Agey amulets around their necks. Lee's theories about who they were ranged from Scientologists to competing a capella singing groups.

Now, by the university, we spotted yet another group of them. And this time, Lee wasn't going to settle for mere idle speculation. This time, he wanted answers. This time, he said, "Let's follow them.”

Amsterdam is, famously, not a wholesome place. Not dangerous per se. But not wholesome. Not the sort of place where you mess around with possible cultists. Or a capella singers.

* * *

On the landmark Skinny Bridge--which our canal boat tour guide described only as historic and the most-photographed bridge in Amsterdam (“So I will slow down to allow you to take your own photos”)--we had seen seven of these men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a row, facing another three, who appeared to be giving orders.

Near our hotel, in the heart of the tourist area by the train station, another group had walked by, some of them with an extra, incongruous accessory: a chartreuse sweatshirt, dirty and mangled and seemingly pulled from a canal, tied loosely around their necks, preppie-style. On the front of the sweatshirts was a large orange and yellow logo for a company, or perhaps an oddly-named sect, called Taco Mundo. The addition of the sweaters, needless to day, did nothing to diminish our confusion.

At this moment, by the university, there were perhaps two dozen of them milling around, chatting and casting furtive glances at passersby.

Three of them broke off from the group and headed toward the Red Light District.

“I've got it--I know who they are, ” Lee said as we followed them from a safe distance, my legs striding quickly to keep up while up in my brain, dueling thought-factions of anxiety and adventurousness grappled for control over my muscles. “They're the European version of a street gang.”

Rain clouds formed above us, darkening the skies and lending our pursuit a dramatic, ominous air that rather unsettled me. Anxiety was winning.

The dapper dudes dodged past families and tour groups, their strides purposeful, never slowing, even when the rain began. At the edge of the Red Light District, they stopped in front of the door to a building that, unlike many of the others here in the surprisingly-clean Red Light District, had a truly dilapidated appearance and a nefarious aura. For a few moments, they spoke with a young woman sitting on a chair in front of the door. Then they disappeared inside.

* * *

The skies opened up, drenching us, so we took shelter in the nearest bar. Lee was in his element, immediately striking up conversation with our bartender, Klara, a cute blonde graduate student from Poland. When she confessed to not knowing much about some of the liquor bottles on the shelves behind her, he excitedly explained the finer points of the various boozes, adding commentary and asides like, “I knew some people who drank Ricard. They were trapeze artists.”

He offered to teach her how to make a particularly daring and esoteric shot.

“You'll do one with us, right?” he asked, flashing a grin that I was beginning to think of as his trademark, a smile that goads you, charms you, into doing something that your common sense is strenuously advising you to avoid.

Klara giggled nervously. “Okay!”

“And you'll let us have them for free, right? Since I'm teaching you how to do it?”

“Oh, I don't …” Her gaze met Lee's. Game over. “Okay, my boss is not here. If he comes, you will have to pay. But if he does not, then it's okay.”

We could hear the rain pick up outside. More drenched patrons surged through the door.

“Busy,” Klara said, frowning, and went off to serve the newcomers.

* * *

Within a few moments, Klara's boss appeared, which meant no free booze for us—a relief for me, because I wasn't sure I trusted Lee's secret shot not to leave me retching in the gutter or, worse, dancing on top of the bar. I was content to nurse my beer.

All around the bar, there were ads some kind of Bolivian alcohol made with coca leaf. Lee asked Klara about it, noting that he'd never seen it in the US. Was it illegal back home? She shrugged. Probably. That was all the enticement Lee needed. He ordered one. It was bright green and looked like it probably glowed in the dark.

“Time for some hallucinations,” Lee smirked as he tossed it back. Luckily for posterity and Lee's future ambitions for elected office, I videotaped the key moment:

* * *

Klara noticed my book sitting on the bar. “Europe on five … dollars? Each day?”

“Yep, that's all we can spend,” Lee said, that grin creeping back. “You can't charge us anything more.”

Klara's eyes widened, and she was speechless until Lee burst out laughing and explained the project. She understood the concept, but not the appeal. “Every day, something weird in Amsterdam,” she said.

* * *

Which reminded us of something. The Dapper A Capella Cult Gang.

"Question for you," Lee said to Klara. "We've been seeing these guys around town ..."

Klara nodded in recognition as he explained. We waited for her explanation.

"They are very bad men," we expected her to say. Well, okay, I expected it. She would then continue, "You must avoid them if you want to see your families and internal organs again."

Perhaps Lee's glow-in-the-dark Bolivian coca alcohol would factor into it--the booze brainwashed you, made you into a zombie who survived only on glow-in-the-dark coca and Taco Mundo.

And brains.

I leaned forward on my bar stool as Klara winced and started to speak. I looked around the room, wondering if perhaps she should speak in a whisper, lest the wrong persons hear. I scoped out the closest exits.

Klara rolled her eyes. “Student group,” she said. “Like you have in American movies.”

We thought for a few moments. “Fraternities?” Lee asked, his brain evidently more optimistic than mine. “Like in Animal House?”

“I do not know this one,” Klara replied.

"It's like a club, and they live together. And before they can join, they have to do stupid stuff," Lee said.

"Ah, yes. One of these."

Lee and I both sighed slightly. Mine was relief; his was disappointment.

An Amsterdam pirate speaks

So back in Amsterdam, on our first night together, Lee and I went to a pirate bar. You can guess whose idea this was--and which of us was somewhat convinced that he was about to inadvertently donate his skeleton to the  decor of the place. For the full story, go back and read my post "Scenes from a pirate bar in Amsterdam."

You know who else read it? Pirates. Amsterdam canal pirates. Apparently pirates read blogs. Apparently pirates, like the rest of us, like to search for themselves on the internet. (For that reason, allow me to state: Blackbeard, if you ever decide to start plundering bakeries, I'd be happy to help. Yo, ho, ho and a barrel of pain au chocolat.) Because a couple of days ago, I got a comment on that year-old post. It's disappointingly free of piratese and seafarer lingo--nary an "Aaarrr" or "Matey" or the Dutch equivalent, whatever that may be--but it's still pretty interesting. Quoth the pirate:

As one of the people working in the pirates bar, I have to comment on this, as I see it, funny post. It sounds like you entered pirates at about 10.30 pm, if at that time it was your fourth bar, you just started too early, mostly all parties start after 11 pm. I think you witnessed a pub-crawl comming every night around 10.45 pm, after that, the night starts. Yeah, there are a lot of english people on the pub-crawl, but you should have been there after 12.30, when most dutch people come to town...

Still hope you enjoyed our bar, and maybe see you another time...

Yes, Amsterdam Pirate, if Lee and I are ever in Amsterdam together again, we will definitely have to stop by and say hi. Or "Aaarrr." And, truly, thanks for clearing up the mystery of the sudden influx of Brits. We did ask a random person if it was a pub crawl, and he said no, but perhaps we just happened to ask the one person who happened to have wandered in on his own.

Also, let it be noted that the International Talk Like a Pirate Day web site has an entire page of Dutch translations of pirate vocabulary and expressions. Like:

Buit / scheepsbuit  booty, swag

Kielhalen  to drag someone along the keel of the ship

Schatkist  treasure chest

AND that same page has Dutch pirate songs. Seriously. Amsterdam Pirates Bar employee, if you're listening: mass pirate song sing-alongs would really enhance the spirit of your bar. You know those carousing Brits would love it. 

Friday flicks: scenes from a pirate bar in Amsterdam

Man, some weird stuff happened in Amsterdam.

I know I am not the first person to utter those words, but I'm guessing I'm the rare individual for whom the "weird stuff" does NOT involve, say, being chased down the street by demonic giant squid or having a profound conversation with a fire hydrant--that is to say, the ingestion of substances not legal back home. We did none of that (no wink wink, nudge nudge here; it's the truth).

But we did spend several days chasing and being chased by creepily dapper secret-society initiates:

[You thought I was kidding?]

... And we did inadvertently start a massive party in a pirate bar.

Before I tell you the story of the pirate bar, I need to remind you that ours is something of an Odd Couple pairing, that Lee is a freelance writer whose beats include nightlife and the singles scene; that I recruited him for this trip in part because Frommer says that "Amsterdam is a swinging town," and Lee is the swingingest guy I know; and that I am, as the Dutch say, kindofaneuroticintrovert.

Let us also have a quick by-the-numbers establishing of some key facts about yours truly:

Total number of bars I had entered during the trip before Lee arrived: zero

Times in my life, ever, that I had been bar-hopping (as in, you know, patronizing multiple bars in a single evening): not a one

Lee and I had joked that it was his job to get me into trouble, and now, as we wander the streets of Amsterdam that first night together, in search of our--count 'em*-- fourth bar of the evening, I am both congratulating and cursing myself for the fact that this "joke" is apparently becoming reality.

It's sometime well after dark, and we've found ourselves in a bustling commercial entertainment district, all neon signs and blaring music and restaurant hosts imploring passersby to try come in and try their drink specials. I'm standing on the sidewalk, taking it all in, when Lee says, quietly, "There."

As I'm about to ask "What? Where?," he cuts me off with a decree, firm and authoritative but tinged with worrying mischievousness. "Pirate bar."

"Pirate ... what?" I don't like where this is going.

"Pirate bar," he repeats. He points toward the forest of neon. My eye follows his gesture, and defying my brain's instructions to feign ignorance, settles on a flashing yellow sign that says, sure enough, "Pirate bar."

"That's where we're going," Lee says, striding forward.

"Um," I say. I compose a mental inventory of reasons why this is a bad idea, but there are so many that I don't even know where to start listing them out loud. So I follow him.

As we get closer, I notice that it looks surprisingly non-kitschy, not much follow-through on the pirate thing. What it looks is totally frickin' sketchy, the Amsterdam equivalent of the candy-offering strangers your mom always warned you about. Come here, little backpacker, it seems to say. Come inside, have a drink, pay no attention to the fact that the weird skeleton out front looks nothing like a pirate and everything like that British college student who went missing here last year ...

I've got it: that's my out. "I disapprove of the lackluster theming," I say as we examine said skeleton outside. "Where are the palm trees and parrots and Jolly Rogers?"

But Lee can't be dissuaded, not by the lack of kitsch, not by my mumblings about roofies and canals and that friend-of-a-friend who woke up without a kidney, not by the fact that we appear to be the only patrons but for two young women dressed Amsterdam-appropriate attire, if you see what I mean. As we sip our Heinekens, we look around the room and note that (a) there really, seriously is no pirate theme whatsover, and it really is just a sketchy dive bar, (b) there is a weird riser-stage thing that is too small for a band but would be just about the right size to serve as an operating table for kidney-removal, and (c) the two women have disappeared through the swinging saloon doors leading to a dimly-lit back room.

As I whimper to myself, two more young women enter through the front door. Thank God. Strength in numbers. They're dressed as if for clubbing. They speak with English accents. They order beers and Jag bombs. A couple of minutes later, few more women enter, same attire, same accent, same order. And then they start coming in waves, clones or sorority sisters or something, dozens of English twenty-somethings, nearly all female.

Within ten minutes, the place is jammed beyond the fire marshal's worst nightmare. The force of the crowd is slowly pushing us off our bar stools. The music starts up, then the fog machine and the strobe light. The party has frickin' started.

I look at Lee, my jaw agape. I want to ask him if he ordered up this party, if he can just snap his fingers and conjure a crowd, if it's going to be like this every night. It's too loud for conversation, though, so I just mouth, "What the hell just happened?" He grins and shrugs, "Who cares?"

We order another round, sit back, and watch the spectacle. Trays of shots pass through the crowd. Several of the Brits crowd the stage-slash-operating-table, dancing to the latest pop hits to reach these shores (meaning, of course, the songs that were popular in the US ten years ago, and whose performers have long since dropped out of the pages of People and Billboard back home).

Very late at night, as the crowd's energy peaks, we're finally treated to a bit of pirate-ness here at the pirate bar. The music and the strobe lights turn off, the bartenders light torches, one of them puts on a tri-corner pirate hat ... and then this happens. (The camera cuts away at the crucial moment, but you can probably deduce what's going on.)

[Yes, it's just six seconds long. I'm running really low on videos!]

---

* Lee, my friend, allow me to preempt any quibbles that this is exaggeration for effect. In case you have forgotten, the others were:  

1. The bar on the little pedestrian street by the hotel, with the enormous wooden kegs and the one tiny booth in back 
2. The cafe/bar on the bridge over the canal, where our waiter gave us little porcelain Dutch clogs 
3. The place in the Jordaan (or thereabouts) where I ordered "nachos"--totally not Frommer-approved; sorry--which turned out to be plain ol' tortilla chips with foul mayo-guac

Friday flicks: Not your mother's brewery tour

Mom visited the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam in 1967 and sent my dad a brilliantly-designed mailable coaster that opened up to reveal a small booklet of photos from the brewery. If you addressed it, they mailed it for you, with a Heineken postmark, no less. (The coaster is at my parents' house; I'll try to scan it and post it here soon. It's a genuinely cool design.)

In the "Readers' Suggestions" section of his Amsterdam chapter, Frommer quotes a correspondent who visited the brewery for its once-daily tour: "While guests are waiting for the tour, they are seated at a very long table, scrubbed white, in a charming tap room with beamed ceiling, and they are served excellent coffee and a variety of cigarettes to please everyone. The tour is very interesting and lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes. Following the tour, you return to the tap room for cheese and Heineken's beer. ... A worthwhile tour, and no fee of any kind."

Let's file this in the every-growing category of "my, how things have changed." Like the Glockenspiel in Munich, this seemed like a case study in how modern tourists--make that modern people in general--demand that their attractions be a bit more whiz-bang, a bit more technologically advanced and interactive than what passed for amusement and entertainment a generation ago.

The first clue that this would be more than a mere self-guided stroll through a brewery came from the site's name: it's no longer merely the Heineken Brewery. It's the Heineken Experience. And "no fee"? Incorrect. That'll be fifteen Euros, please.

The video below shows some of the scenes from the tour. Alas, I don't have any footage of the beer ride (yep), in which you stand on a platform that tilts and lurches as you watch a movie about the brewing process--specifically, what it would be like if you were being brewed. When you're being cooked, heat lamps come on. Sprinklers spray you with water. And when they add the hops, GIANT BEANBAGS drop from the ceiling onto your head!!

Okay, I made up that last part. But I half-expected it, given the intensity (and general weirdness) of the ride.

Anyway, here are just a few of the things we did see at the not-free, over-the-top Heineken Experience:

Oh, and they didn't have any beer coaster postcards, free or otherwise. They did have free e-postcard booth, and Lee and I sent my mom a cheesy note with a cheesy photo of us mugging with a Heineken-green windmill. And they did have big packs of coasters--not the mailable kind--for sale in the gift shop, alongside other items, such as ...

Friday flicks: the best street musicians in Amsterdam

I was surprised by Amsterdam's relative lack of good street musicians--most were half-stoned backpackers strumming beat-up guitars and slurring out Bob Marley's greatest hits, or wheezing into a didgeridoo.* 

Of all the cities on our itinerary, I had expected Amsterdam to have the liveliest street life, and the widest range of living statues and jugglers and mimes and musicians. But there really weren't that many, and those we did find were, as a rule, atrocious--like the world's creepiest, least-coordinated Michael Jackson impersonator, who stood outside our hotel most days. Alas, I took no video of him (I didn't want to feel obliged to give him money). 

But I do have a video of some musicians who made up for their less-talented peers. This group, from Spain, was good--transcendently good--particularly the clarinetist. 

Incidentally, I think that street performers are one of the benefits of tourism. Yes, there are performers in random parks and streets all over the world. But crowds attract performers, and some of them--like this band, or the various entertainers at Mallory Square in Key West--are mesmerizingly talented. If you want good, cheap entertainment, seek out the places with great street performers--seek out the beaten path.

---
* I saw at least two or three didgeridoo-playing backpackers in each city (including a duet in Vienna), and always found the sight both laudable and laughable. That's a heck of an instrument to lug around for weeks or months at a stretch, so kudos for the audacity and determination required to do so. But really: why? A guitar I can kind of understand; a recorder or something that fits in your pocket makes even more sense. But a huge horn that is not particularly melodic and which you, dear backpacker, clearly don't even know how to play? That I will never comprehend. (Although I will state, for the record, that I think the didgeridoo does sound kinda cool. For the first 90 seconds.) 


Okay, granted, I suppose it's conceivable that you, white American backpacker, have played the didgeridoo all your life, starting on the mini-ridoo when you were a toddler, jamming with your high school buddies in your parents' garage, showing off your skills at the college talent show, getting in on the retro music craze with a didgeridoo-wop swing band, maybe playing a hymn or a Beatles ballad at your friend's wedding. It's not impossible.  Or ... Did you recently decide to start playing (and hauling) it because this particular instrument--more than, say, a tuba or an oboe or the similarly-shaped Alp horn--has all kinds of fascinating cultural connotations and is an ideal symbol of how you're a true citizen of the world, deeply aware of indigenous traditions across the globe? (... With whom you're currently hanging out in spirit, even if you it appears that you are, in fact, sitting smack in the heart of tourist territory.)   


(Sorry, I'm in an especially snarky mood today. I've been reading The Tourist.)

Friday Flicks: off the beaten path in Amsterdam

Our tour guide in Amsterdam said that if we rented bikes and followed the Amstel River out of town for just a mile or so, we'd find ourselves in Ye Olde Holland, with cows and tulips and windmills and clog-wearing farmers inviting us into their ramshackle canal-side cottages to sample their Gouda ... Okay, slight exaggeration. But we really were promised cows and pastoral countryside.

Instead, no matter how far we pedaled, we found nothing but suburban wasteland:

I should take my photos from this excursion and photos from the New Jersey Turnpike and make them into a guessing game: "Jersey or Holland?" Like this one below. Which is it, Jersey (or suburban area in the USA) or Holland?

Yeah: Holland. No cows here, at least not in forms larger than a quarter-pound (with cheese). It was pretty dreary: malls and fast food and industrial parks and even self-storage. Self-storage!

Also the world's most depressing car wash. Excuse me, make that Car Wash Center 2000. With incongruous Statue of Liberty figurine (dressed in some kind of American flag toga thing) on the roof:

Lesson: just because it's off the beaten path doesn't mean it's charming. As I said at the end of the video, it's definitely a part of Amsterdam that most tourists don't see. And for good reason.

Grief Tourism in a Theme Park World

It's been interesting to read the comments on my story on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site. Several people have scolded me for being cynical and said that I must be really ignorant of history if I thought the Anne Frank House was "a tourist trap."

So let me be clear: I'm a cynic, not a moron. My initial cynicism, before I entered the house, was not due to ignorance of history but to knowledge of tourism--and the ways in which camera-toting hordes can make even the most somber site feel like Disneyland.  Serious subject matter does not always make for serious visitors, and even if everyone is properly sober and thoughtful, the sheer size of the crowds does rather alter the mood.

In a great essay a couple of years ago on World Hum, Frank Bures noted that "dark tourism"--also known as "grief tourism"--is gaining popularity precisely because it is often feels so different from the cheerier, landmark-ier travel experiences to which we're accustomed:

... Dark Tourism also raises questions about Planet Theme Park and packaged, bundled, marketed and scripted entertainment experiences. I can’t help but think that the allure of the dark side is in part a backlash to the aggressive theming and constructing of the travel experience, which unfolds as others have determined it to unfold, where we feel things we’ve been told we’ll feel, and where our travels are not, on some fundamental level, our own. Because sometimes we want more than that. We travel exactly because we want to see and feel things for ourselves. We want to write the script to our own story, not just read someone else’s.

My fear with the Anne Frank House, though, was that it would be yet another stop on Planet Theme Park, or at least that my fellow travelers would view it as such--a place to visit not out of any sense of moral or historic obligation, not because of a duty to remember the past (and even to attempt the impossible task of beginning to make some sense of it), but because they saw it listed in a magazine article once, or in one of those books with titles like 1,000 Things You Absolutely Positively Must Do Before You Die, Unless You're a Total Loser.

I know that this is something that such sites grapple with, actually: How do we provide enough amenities and interesting interpretive exhibits to tell the story and keep people coming ... without opening ourselves up to the accusation of cheapening the historic importance, commodifying tragedy?

Journalist/blogger Darren Garnick e-mailed me a link to his story about visiting Auschwitz, which addresses this very subject. It's a fascinating, thoughtful piece:

As custodian of the camps, the Polish government is often in a no-win situation. If it promotes the camps too much, it will be accused of exploitation. If it stays too low-key, it could be accused of ignoring the Holocaust. According to Young, the most positive change was when the post-Communist government stopped renting out the camps as sets for movies and TV programs.

In 1989, the American producers of “Triumph of the Spirit” (a movie about a Greek-Jewish boxer forced to fight fellow inmates for Nazi entertainment) left papier-mache gas chambers propped up at Birkenau directly over the dynamited ruins left by the Germans. Says Young: “The last thing I’d want is to see a Holocaust denier show up and see a fake gas chamber.”

Finding that middle road is a pretty impossible task, though. I think a certain amount of effort has to be put into the presentation of a site--particularly one as large and horrifying as a concentration camp--for the simple reason that it's so difficult for us tourists to wrap our minds around the awful things that happened there. We need some guidance, some background information, to help us make sense of it all.  We need to know both the broad context and the specific stories for history to come alive.  We need some amount of exhibits or audio guides or other elements beyond the historic artifacts and structures (etc.) themselves. But adding those elements can sometimes overwhelm the authentic, elemental nature of the place. It becomes a museum, not a real place where real--and awful--things happened.

And that, in the end, is what's so effective about the Anne Frank House. Most of us already know the story, the context. The museum section on the lower levels of the house provides further background about both the historical moment and the Frank family in particular. But when you enter the hiding space, there are no whiz-bang distractions. It's starkly real. And the reality of it hits you like a tidal wave.

One last note: Lee and I also visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which Lee recently wrote about on his blog (my emphasis below):

Of all the depressing things in that camp, one of the few I could comprehend was this, a semi-circular track made of different surfaces ... which the Nazis made prisoners walk on all day to test shoe materials. I can’t really imagine a concentration camp, but I can imagine walking all day over a shitty track. The Nazis were assholes.

The Anne Frank House and the jaded backpacker

The Not-So-Grand Tour wasn't all getting lost and overdosing on tourist kitsch.

Case in point: our visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (which I blogged about previously). You can read all about it in my new essay in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

During my first two days in Amsterdam, I walked past the Anne Frank House a half dozen times without going in.

Each time, there was a line down the block and a handful of tourists posing in front of the house with wide grins, casually leaning on the doorway as if it were Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland. My guidebook called the experience of visiting the house "searing, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief," but I was beginning to have my doubts. No matter how serious the subject matter, it seemed to be just another crowded, tacky tourist trap.

Still, I felt obligated to visit. So on the third day, I finally joined the line, along with my friend Lee. We braced ourselves for appallingly cheesy displays and loud, distasteful comments from our fellow visitors.

Read more

"Time for some hallucinations"

Where would you expect to hear such a quote? Why, in Amsterdam, of course. Oh, don't be so alarmed: this was mere alcohol Lee was ingesting. Bright-green alcohol infused with some kind of super-potent elixir made of top-secret jungle leaves from Bolivia. Or something like that. I could check my notes, but where's the fun in that? [UPDATE: I believe it was Agwa de Bolivia, described and reviewed here.]

Anyway, this was one of our first days together. Lee was trying to set an example for me, to be the Ferris (Bueller) to my Cameron, to show me how to live it up.

Sidekick and statue: separated at birth?

Lee, modeling the attire available for sale at the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam:

And a similarly-chilly trompe l'oeil faux-statue at the Vatican:

The burdens of baggage

Lee showed up with, like, nothing. A duffel bag--small enough to carry on--and a half-full small backpack.

I, on the other hand, have a bag packed with roughly enough items to build a space shuttle from scratch, then supply it for a year.

Clearly Lee heeded the warnings that Arthur--or rather Hope, his wife, who penned this particular chapter--offers about "the burdens of baggage."

And yet, if you'd seen our hotel room in Amsterdam last night, twelve hours before we were to head off to Brussels, you might have thought that I was the light--or at least fastidious--packer. Which led to the following conversation:

Lee: "How is it that my side of the room looks disasterous and yours is so tidy?"

Doug: "Um, tidy?" I have never been called tidy in my life. Ever.

Lee: "Yeah, it's so orderly and neat."

Doug (stifling an incredulous laugh): "That's because I've learned to create the illusion of organization. My crap doesn't sprawl as much; it's in more vertical piles. It is not cleanliness, it's craftiness. Key distinction."

Lee: "Maaaaybe."

Doug: "Actually, I'm trying to cultivate an 'Odd Couple' atmosphere. You know, for narrative's sake. I'm Jack Lemmon and you're Walter Matthau."

Lee: "I never saw the movie, but I think I get the idea."

Doug (realizing my pop culture references tend to be as outdated as my guidebooks, and about as useful): "Okay, umm ... I'm Bert and you're Ernie."

Lee: "Ah. That's better."

Doug: "I'm tall and skinny, you're short and squat."

Lee: "No. Not better. Or accurate."

I will say this, though, in my defense: I travel lighter than the New York Times' Frugal Traveler. Not that I want to start any battles with Actual Professionals here (and not that I think Matt Gross will read this), but last year, on his own Grand Tour, he packed a blazer and three (three!) pairs of shoes. Really?!

I also travel cheaper. You know, more frugally. Lee's definitely been helping with that. The hostel he found for us in Brussels--from which I write this--is fantastic. Cheap and half a block off the Grand Place. Good work, Lee!

Fun with out-of-context quotes

The scene:
Doug and Lee have just arrived at the Museumplein in Amsterdam after biking around the city and into the suburbs, which the tour guide promised would be filled with cows and windmills but were totally bleak and industrial and un-bucolic. Lee lies down on an expanse of grass, the first we have seen in the city. He looks fatigued but content. The park bustles in a most agreeably Old World manner.

Lee: This is why I came to Europe: to lie in the grass here.

Doug: You came all the way to Amsterdam to lie in the grass?

Lee: Yes. It's nice grass.

Doug: I'm quoting you on that. "Duuuude, the grass in Amsterdam is really nice. Primo stuff, this grass."

Lee: That's not what I said. You, sir, are completely distorting what I said.

Doug: Correct.

Not-So-Flattering Views of Famous Places: "I Amsterdam" sign

Museumplein

Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

I still believe that tourists are really good at heart

[UPDATE: A slightly tweaked version of this essay appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in February 2010. Click here to read that version.]

Frommer gives the Anne Frank House its own section, under the heading "The Unforgettable." He calls the effect of visiting "searing, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief"; he then adds, "Let none of us ever pass through Amsterdam without making a pilgrimage to the Anne Frank House."

But I’d seen the line—out the door, down the block. And I’d seen the tourists posing in front of the house with wide grins, casually leaning on the doorway like it was Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. No matter how serious the subject matter, the experience was bound to be rich with irony and cheesiness.

Lee and I joined the line just behind four British women in their early twenties. We watched them dig hungrily into their bag of potato chips and listened to their stories of drunkenness at various moments in their lives and, the preceding day, of getting stoned at one of the coffee shops here. It was, frankly, the precise type of vapid conversation you’d stereotypically expect of tourists of that age. One woman was particularly quick with the tales of debauchery. She had bleach-blonde hair, pulled into a ponytail with a small pink ribbon, and wore huge sunglasses, an astonishing amount of makeup, flip-flops and a tight black outfit that left little to the imagination. She was, in short, a tourist in all the stereotypical and pejorative meanings of the term.

So amusingly inane was the conversation that midway through our half-hour in line, I discreetly switched on my voice recorder. The topic switched to bad sushi, and the prevalence thereof in London and Amsterdam, then back to drunkenness. Lee and I exchanged looks of amusement and confusion.

"I bet there’ll be some precious comments inside the museum, too," Lee said.

I grinned. This was gonna be epic comedy.

Well . . . it wasn’t. Sure, the crowds were thick, and people said some silly things, like the woman cooing with delight at the bathroom in the hiding space—"Ooh, what a lovely toilet!" Yet even so, the house was so haunting, its story so jarring—even though I’d already heard it, knew it backwards and forwards—that all the snark drained from my body within a few minutes.

It was, as Frommer says, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief, even in spite of the crowds. There are quotes from Anne’s diaries on many of the walls in the lower part of the house, and they are of course lyrical and melancholy in equal measure. But once you climb the steep staircase beyond the famous bookshelf, you enter a place that just should not exist, that should not have to exist—and whose very existence tugs at your soul and makes you despair in some elemental way.

There were two things that struck me most. First was the section of wall, now covered in glass, on which the Frank family measured the growth of Anne and her sister, Margot. It’s such a mundane thing, which is what makes it so immediately identifiable—somehow, this detail can’t help but make you think of your own family, your own growth, your own youth. More disturbing, though, is your realization that they weren’t just in here for a few hours or a few weeks—there was enough time for the kids to grow, for the passing and loss of their youth to be documented inch by inch.

And then there was a line from Anne’s diary, dated December 24, 1943 and printed on the wall in the secret apartment: "I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free."

To read that quote in the midst of my own six-week, trans-continental journey—one that is, essentially, an expression of freedom and youth—is a jarring reminder that life is not always like this for everyone, not an endless stream of new discoveries and delights. For us tourists, the Anne Frank House is a destination to be checked off and posed in front of before we head on to the Heineken Experience or the Van Gogh Museum—it’s a place of fleeting interest in our journeys. We rarely pause to appreciate the fact that to see all these places is a luxury, that travel is a freedom not available to everyone. For Anne—and, more to the point, for way too many other nameless, forgotten individuals, then and now—travel wasn’t an option, not even a journey across the street. Home was prison.

That’s why it’s not the bookshelf that is most haunting, or Anne’s diary entries about having to be quiet and not open the curtains, "not even an inch"—it’s the mundane details, the ones so symbolic of our everyday existence. These are what make you realize that the Frank family passed their days and lived their lives—every aspect, every moment—in this space, in constant fear but also constantly trying to transcend that fear and create something akin to the humdrum happiness of normalcy. The concentration camps are not something that tourists can begin to fathom, so we really don’t even try. But this hiding space—this living space—is something we can relate to, which makes it, in a peculiar way, more real, more searing, more heartbreaking.

So while the house might start off as just another place to visit and check off, it ends up genuinely moving, chilling, enraging. History has come alive in the most unsettling way.

I know that some people leave somehow uplifted and inspired by Anne’s hopeful words, buoyed by their lyricism and introspection in the face of great evil. That’s not how I felt. I left disconcerted and upset by the ending of the story—I’m sorry, but no matter how positive Anne’s sentiments, and how admirable her ability to see the good in humanity, the fact is, she was a prisoner in her own house for years, and then she was captured and killed. Life’s pretty fucked-up: that’s my take-away message. It’s impossible to leave the house without being at least a bit pissed off and teary-eyed.

Near the end of the tour, I saw the British woman who had been in line in front of us, the Stereotypical Tourist with the flip-flops and tales of getting plastered all over the world. Now, her sunglasses were off and her makeup was streaked.

I followed her to the exit and we stepped out into the sunlight, young and free.

Getting sloshed with celebrities

Arthur's opening line for the Amsterdam chapter invites snickers and raised eyebrows: "Amsterdam is a swinging town." The modern reader can't help but think, Oh, really, Arthur? What do you mean by that, exactly?

One thing it means in 2009--one of the more wholesome interpretations, actually--is, "Amsterdam is a great placed to party hard and get smashed out of your gourd." At least, that seems to be what this town has become, tourism-wise: the one place people visit in hopes of a trip they won't remember.

According to our tour guide yesterday, Amsterdam's famously lax drug laws and the attendant rise of the infamous coffeeshops didn't come into place until the late 1960s. (I'm on a public computer and am dashing this off, so no time for a fact check. But it sounds good, yes?) So that would be post-E5D.

But even now, the swingingest, liveliest, most popular part of the Amsterdam tourist experience seems not to be the part that is illegal in most other places, but that which is really quite readily available most everywhere: getting rip-roaring drunk in seedy bars.

Two nights ago, Lee and I took shelter from the rain in a bar near the train station. It was not Old World and wood-paneled and charming, nor was it kitschy and cheesy and touristy, and therefore charming or at least fascinating on an entirely different level.

It was just a dive. There were some gaunt, sallow-eyed toughs playing pool, and I have to confess to a few moments of panic and a vision of the night ending with a broken pool cue through my chest.

Lee and I took our beers to the tiny basement area, which was halfheartedly decorated with retro beer posters and broken sconces. Our conversation drifted to the writing life and the joys of people-watching in anonymity. We decided that well-known writers have just the right level of fame: people know their names but not their faces. No one recognizes them in public.

As we were joking about turning down autographs and wearing sunglasses in seedy bars such as this one, a young woman gaveled a massive beer stein on the table next to Lee, then eased herself onto the adjacent stool.

"We heard you talking," she said in a clipped British accent frayed with tipsiness. Gesturing to her four friends, she continued, "She says you were saying something about being famous. Are you famous?"

"Well, we will be," Lee replied, grinning. "Give us some time. A few weeks, maybe."

"Are you famous now?" the woman asked, apparently hoping we were just being modest.

"Yes, you've discovered us," I said. "I'm Brad Pitt and this is George Clooney."

She was not amused; her face became a mask of derision and disappointment. We were no longer interesting--just some losers in a bar, not celebrities she didn't recognize. I could almost hear her thinking, "Fuck you for not being famous." And also, probably: "I walked all the way over here and you can't even be some B-list reality TV stars? Just some writers? I'm wasting my breath on writers?!"

Lee and I, however, were amused and willing to continue the conversation. They were from London and had come here just for a long weekend to celebrate our new non-friend's birthday.

"Wait, you flew to Amsterdam just for the weekend, for a birthday party?"

They gave us blank looks. Of course you'd fly to another country for a few days for a birthday party. Dumb-ass Americans, stuck in the dark ages of travel.

"But ... why Amsterdam?" Lee asked.

The five answered in giddy, drunken unison: "To get fucked up!"

I'd like to point out, once again, that we were in a bar, drinking beer (that is, not in a coffeeshop consuming other items). Last time I checked, England had bars. Rather a lot. Also beer.

But such is the nature of European tourism now. With the open EU borders and the ease and low prices of air travel, going from London to Amsterdam requires about as much effort as traveling up to Edinburgh by train or even across to the other side of town. So why not?

They certainly weren't the only Brits we've met in the last few days who have come to Amsterdam to drink lots and dance to crappy pop music. (And incidentally, is European music just stuck 15 years behind American music? Because everywhere we go, even the quiet, Old World bars or side-street Thai restaurants, we hear the same godawful mid-1990s techno and Euro-hip-hop, of the variety that Lee termed "Fisher-Price My First Turntable.)

Once it was established that we really were lowly nobodies, the conversation turned to writing, and the pathetic nature of writers, specifically those who are Americans traveling in Europe looking for material. Our new non-friend drunkenly (and accidentally) tore the cover half off E5D when I brought it out to explain the project.

"So what kind of bad ideas have you had so far? Have they been really bad?" Her eyebrows waggled salaciously, as though I could redeem my lack of fame by offering a laundry list of vices, regrets, and deeply misguided doings.

"Well, I ... I showed up here without a map," I said.

She scoffed. "Did you go to the red light district?"

"Er, no."

"That's terrible. Your ideas aren't bad enough." Looking at her friends, she added, "I want a hot dog."

"So will we be in your book?"she asked as she drained her beer.

"You haven't been interesting enough," Lee said brightly.

"Just mention the drunk girl in Amsterdam," came the slurred reply.

"Let's go see a sex show," her friend added. I'm not sure if it was a sincere suggestion or just the first excuse she could think of to ditch these non-celebrities.

They headed out with half-waves, leaving us once again anonymous and at peace. We were fine with that.

By the numbers

Cities visited: 2
Cities to go: 8
Museums visited: approx. 4
Amusement parks visited: 1 (Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen)
Pirate-themed bars patronized: 1
Level of theming in said pirate bar: lackluster, disappointing
Frommer-approved restaurants eaten in: just 1
Varieties of tours taken: 3 (walking, boat, bike)
Chocolate croissants consumed: approx. 8
Other pastries consumed: approx. 8
Number of bikes, in thousands, recovered from Amsterdam canals annually: 25
Number of bikes fallen off (by me): 1
Bike-falls into canal (by me): 0, so far
Rank of falling-off-bike-and-into-Amsterdam-canal as killer of my mother's high school acquaintences, at least as far as I've heard: 1
(Number of her classmates drowned in said canals: 1)
Level of my fear of meeting this demise: high
Tourists in Amsterdam killed by trams each year: 2
Times I have almost become one of those two: 2
Population of Copenhagen: approx. 1.7 million
Number of bikes in Copenhagen: approx. 2.5 million
Most common variety of look given by passersby upon seeing my copy of E5D: confusion
Second-most-common: scorn
Fantastic street performers seen in Copenhagen: at least 5
In Amsterdam: 0
Percentage of Amsterdam street performers who are tone-deaf hippies strumming broken guitars, presumably hoping for some spare change for weed: approx. 95
Number of Amsterdam museums that I really can't believe actually exist: at least 5 (Handbags & Purses, Vodka, Erotic, Cannabis, Sex)

Maps? We don't need no stinkin' maps!

I see that Lee has gotten into the spirit of misadventure and willful ignorance. Well done, sir! I look forward to getting lost with you, starting in a matter of hours.

As it turns out, maybe we really don't need maps. Maybe.

I arrived in Amsterdam around 5:30 p.m.yesterday. I stepped off the train from the airport--the blissful, relaxing "silent" car, to be specific--and into the most packed station I have seen in my life. It was a human traffic jam, and all I could do was inch forward, hoping that the tide of humanity would eventually leave me washed up near an exit, and paranoid, in the meantime, at every bump and justle (of which there was a constant barrage), continually patting my pockets to make sure the contents hadn't been spirited away.

Eventually I found myself at a door. I strode outside, where the crowds were only slightly thinner but had been joined by a deluge of honking cars and dinging bicycles.

And here was a problem: I had no idea where I was. Not the tiniest semblance of a clue. Arthur says that the Hotel Van Gelder, where we'll be staying for the next few nights, is near the railroad station, but he doesn't think to include it on the map. The map also does not contain the train station or the major street on which the hotel is located. Or any landmarks that might be of interest or use.

Because, for some reason, there is no map of Amsterdam. For nearly every other city, Arthur includes at least a one-page, hand-drawn map of the center of town. In most cases, there aren't many streets labeled, but the big ones are typically there, along with a few of the better-known landmarks and maybe some restaurants and hotels. If you wander around enough, you'll find probably eventually figure out where you are.

In Amsterdam, however, I'll be relying solely on my wits--never a promising proposition. These next few days could be rather interesting. There may need to be some cheating if we're going to get anywhere or see anything other than that which we accidentally stumble upon. That said, there do seem to be some kiosks with maps here and there, and I think that using these is within the rules of the game, since we won't actually be seeking them out. (Google Maps or a new guidebook would be definite no-nos).

And maybe my wits--or at least my luck--are more fine-tuned than I thought, because somehow, astonishingly, I found the hotel right away, even without a map. It turns out that the street it's on, Damrak, originates right in front of the train station. It was a tremendous relief: I won't be sleeping in a dumpster! Really, you have no idea the scenarios an anxious, neurotic mind (oh, and jetlagged--can I still use that excuse?) can cook up as its scared-shitless owner realizes he's in a sprawling city filled with windy roads, narrow canals into which top-heavy backpackers can fall way too easily, and all manner of Big Scary Things, and he has no idea where he's going. Hypothetically.

That street sign was possibly the most assuaging, reassuring sight I'd ever seen. And I have to say, as those worst-case scenarios began to fade, the street itself looked for all the world like like the yellow brick road, coyly beckoning with the unspoken promise of adventure. Follow.

I breathed a sigh of relief . . . which was quickly followed by a cough of agony as the singular smell of Amsterdam hit my lungs. I carried on, with shallow, cautious breaths, and eyes wide at the crowded, neon-sign-filled spectacle before me. A rush of giddiness swept away all coherent thoughts, replacing them with one-word exclamations of delight: Wow. Gosh. Whoa. AWESOME.

So, Lee, I know you won't read this before we meet up, but here's how you get to the hotel:

It's in the first block on the other side of the Soomthiing-Or-Öther Canal, just across from the station. Walk past the Sex Museum (yep) and keep going until you get to the corner, then realize that the numbers are now too high. Double back, keeping a closer eye on the numbers, and get distracted by the sight of the Vodka Museum (indeed); get further distracted by your snickering thought that in all likelihood, the opening of the Vodka Museum directly led to the erection (!) of the Sex Museum, and that, following the natural course of things, the next attractions will be the Shrieking Toddler Museum, the Surly Teenager Museum, and the College Tuition Museum. As you snicker, proceed past the Sex Museum again. Realize that you've walked past your destination a second time. Turn around once more . . . and this time, focusing, focusing, you'll see it, right next door to the Vodka Museum: the small doorway of the Hotel Van Gelder.

Scenes from a Life of Adventure

The scene is a bar in Baltimore. Lee is behind the bar. A regular patron is sitting at the bar, describing his favorite Amsterdam haunts. It is mid-afternoon last Sunday.

The regular gets a piece of paper and begins drawing a map for Lee to lead him to the bar (Gollum) which the regular remembers most fondly. It begins to dawn on Lee that he does not own a map of Amsterdam. In fact, he realizes, he has never even seen a map of Amsterdam. He is not even clear on what "The Netherlands" are. They sound, to him, like the name of a bad Sci Fi Channel series.

"Are you flying into Schippel?" the regular asks.
"Yes," Lee replies, because he reasons that the regular knows more about Amsterdam than he himself does.
"OK, when you get off the plane the ticket booths are to your right for the train."
Lee begins to realize that he had not yet figured out how he would get from the airport to the hotel.
Lee begins to suppress a mild panic.

We now fast forward to today, five hours before Lee boards a plane for Amsterdam. The reader will be pleased to learn that Lee has no more information about the city than he did that afternoon at the bar, minus of course a hand drawn map that will get him to Gollum.

What more does one need, really?